How to actually marry an ARPG with a Soulslike - some thoughts

1. Get rid of identification. It's already been trivialized by Hooded One and this will allow us to sort/filter loot on the ground.

2. Make found loot unusable/unequippable until you reach a checkpoint, and drop on ground when you portal out or die a la Heist.

3. After portalling out, you can't just portal back - you have to use the waypoint/checkpoint and hoof it back.

4. You have one chance to retrieve your loot after dropping it, then it's gone forever (similar to retrieving lost souls/runes/etc.) This extends to maps - you get at least 2 tries.

5. Decrease the number of enemies in maps and later act zones but make white mobs a lot tougher as a baseline. Shrink zones and buff loot drops (both quantity and quality) accordingly. Add additional checkpoints where necessary.

This would make combat a lot more meaningful/impactful, get players to care about loot, and adds some tension around dying/retreating.

Got any ideas of your own? Please share!

Really like your 4th point, think it sounds like a nice middle ground from what we have right now.

6. Create all this in a league called "Soulslike", similar to Standard, cause if these things were implemented in POE2 Standard, very few people would play it.

Agreed this would help a lot, I was a little disappointed my dodge roll is only used for getting out of a mobbed situation. I think at most times, 4 enemies attacking you at once is appropriate and that shouldn't be easy

Dropping ID'd loot has been talked about for a very, very long time. It's not a great solution. I think the tiers system in endgame is a great step in the right direction. You really don't want to be able to sort loot on the ground, because that is taking away the entirety of the RNG/looting factor from the game. It's just a random amount of time until eventually the perfect or near perfect item drops. You remove all opportunity cost associated with collecting loot and getting it to drop, other than time investment.

2 and 3 seem very strange to me, and I am unsure of what they actually accomplish aside from prolonging time spent traversing the maps.

4 seems strange. If i die i cant ressurect. Im hc. Loot is gone anyway

5 i can understand this approach. Im not sure if the skill system is setup for this to offer meaningful 1 to 1 dodgefights. Im fine with the swarm. Thats core.

most likely about the 5 like +1. it's not suppossed to be poe 1 which currently is even faster and have more mobs than poe 1.. great ideas anyway

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Storylyne#1859 wrote:

4 seems strange. If i die i cant ressurect. Im hc. Loot is gone anyway

Hardcore is an optional challenge that isn't meant for everyone. People play permadeath in Soulslikes all the time, and they don't get to pause the game like you do in PoE 2.

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5 i can understand this approach. Im not sure if the skill system is setup for this to offer meaningful 1 to 1 dodgefights. Im fine with the swarm. Thats core.

There's really no reason it needs to be though. You can reduce the number of mobs by 90% and increase rewards by 1,000% with an appropriate difficulty bump. Now every fight is significant and lasts long enough for meaningful decisions to be made.

#5 Roll roll? 1,2.
You could load quite alot of mf on your char if needed. The game is still no real dark souls... which is fine to me. If its too easy you can always escape to ssf or hc or ruthless. If you have a ssf hc 100 here and say its still too easy probably also endgame is missing.

Thinking twice i dont have a strong opinion here but please not less mob density on the same size of map with even lesser runspeed/movement skills or i need a horse ! Like in elden ring. Im fine with something additional which alters map behaviour.. lesser density stronger mobs, lesser map size or higher density.. think of scarabs from poe1 for exiles and gigantification. These had higher rarity, hit harder etc. You could further scale that.. + t17 maps or Valdo maps.. mob pack accompanied by map boss modifier. So far in poe1 it added further density and scaled deadly mobs in favour for loot in poe1 but didnt shrink map size or density.

#4 was implemented kindof in heist but not in maps. I dont mind but dont see a strong value add.

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Storylyne#1859 wrote:

#5 Roll roll? 1,2.
You could load quite alot of mf on your char if needed. The game is still no real dark souls... which is fine to me. If its too easy you can always escape to ssf or hc or ruthless. If you have a ssf hc 100 here and say its still too easy probably also endgame is missing.

Thinking twice i dont have a strong opinion here but please no less mob density on the same size of map with even lesser runspeed/movement skills or i need a horse! Like in elden ring. Im fine with something which alters mab behaviour.. lesser density stronger mobs or higher density.. think of scarabs for exiles and gigantification. That existed kindof in 1.

#4 was implemented kindof in heist but not in maps. I dont mind but dont see a strong value add.

The value add is loot gets to be better because mobs are now more threatening and there's loot loss on death with a single chance to get it back.